Christmas and the Glory of the Lord
March 11 2003
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MIDNIGHT MASS occupies a special place in the Catholic celebration of Christmas. The family getting ready to go the local parish church – the younger ones excited to be changing into their suits and dresses instead of into their pajamas – is reminded as they head out into the darkness that the shepherds also made their way to see the baby Jesus by the light of the stars. And as the procession begins, often including the children of the parish carrying statues of the Holy Family to place in the crèche, the traditional strains of Adeste Fideles (O Come all ye faithful) break the stillness of the December night.
A pilgrimage
The Jubilee Year, now moving towards its close, has encouraged Christians in all parts of the world to remember that we are pilgrims in this world. Hundreds of millions have responded to the Holy Father’s invitation to go on pilgrimages in their own dioceses, to local shrines, and, above all, to Rome and the Holy Land. Despite the enormous scale of the Great Jubilee, it is only a reprise of the first pilgrimage, two thousand years ago, made by those few shepherds who went in search of God in the hills of Bethlehem.
But do the pilgrims of this Holy Year experience what those first shepherds experienced? The first Christmas was not only a silent night in an obscure Jewish town. That first Christmas was a cosmic event – an event that changed the universe. Too often, our celebration of Christmas keeps us aloof from the world-changing impact of what happened that night when a young Jewish mother wrapped her little baby boy in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger. Christmas is a common tale – the birth of a baby – commonly celebrated, with folk songs, and traditional dishes and toys for the children. And yet, the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Son of the Father, is a most uncommon, awesome event. The Great Jubilee, having drawn our attention to so many different aspects of the faith and of the Church, now needs, in its final days, to redirect our attention to the magnificence, majesty and mystery of what happened that first Christmas night two thousand years ago.
Rejoice in the Lord
Last Christmas in St. Peter’s Basilica, after the opening of the Holy Door, the Proclamation of the Great Jubilee cried out, Jubilate Deo omnis terra (Rejoice in the Lord all the earth). In that we hear an echo of what the angels said that night in Bethlehem, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.(Luke 2:10-11).
That good news – that Gospel – of great joy which will come to all the people is nothing short of God Himself, coming to dwell among us. Christians should not shortchange themselves this Jubilee Christmas – what we are celebrating is not merely another feast, another bit of good news, but the feast of feasts, the Good News. However expansive our vision is, however creative our imagination – we need to look more intensely, dream more vividly, rejoice more profoundly.
All creation renewed
The fact that in the fullness of time the Eternal Word took on the condition of a creature gives a unique cosmic value to the event which took place in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, wrote Pope John Paul II in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (On the Coming of the Third Millennium), the letter which announced the Great Jubilee. Thanks to the Word, the world of creatures appears as a ‘cosmos’, an ordered universe. And it is the same Word who, by taking flesh, renews the cosmic order of creation.
On Christmas night, all of creation is being renewed, re-ordered, even recreated. The angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Almighty will overshadow you (Luke 1:35), a direct echo of the Spirit of God who hovered over the formless waters before the work of creation began (Genesis 1:2). Now in Bethlehem, the angel comes to tell the shepherds about this new creation in Christ, and just as God pronounced all creation to be very good (Genesis 1:31) in the beginning, the angel promises good news.
Whatever amazement and awe the spectacular wonders of the natural world inspire in us, so much more so should be our amazement and awe at the event in Bethlehem. If the heavens show forth the glory of God (Psalm 19:1), and they surely do, all the more is the mystery of Christmas suffused with that glory.
And the glory of the Lord shone around them – Luke 2:9. The shepherds began that first Jubilee pilgrimage surrounded by the glory of the Lord – that same terrifying, earth-shaking, awe-inspiring glory that descended upon Moses on Mount Sinai, and would later produce the blinding countenance of Jesus on the mount of the transfiguration.
Surrounded by the glory of the Lord, no doubt trembling before the mystery revealed to them, the shepherds looked up and saw the heavens rent asunder, and a countless number of the heavenly host of angels thundering Glory to God in the highest (Luke 2:14).
Be present
That first Jubilee pilgrimage was one of praise in honour of the Incarnation. It was a response to the glory of God. The mighty scale of the Great Jubilee has been nothing more than an attempt by the Church throughout the world to join in that hymn sung by the Church in heaven, Glory to God in the highest. It is the primary and fundamental religious response to God’s revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ and it should animate the celebration of this first Christmas of the third millennium.
Jesus Christ is the recapitulation of everything (Ephesians 1:10) and at the same time the fulfillment of all things in God: a fulfillment which is the glory of God, writes the Holy Father in Tertio Millennio Adveniente. The religion founded upon Jesus Christ is a religion of glory; it is a newness of life for the praise of the glory of God.
Standing before the glory of God, what is the proper response? Humility, curiosity, anxiety and fear are likely responses. At least that was what the shepherds felt. But the Christmas hymn points the way – Adeste fideles. In our English hymn, we translate that first word as Come, but the Latin verb is better understood as be present. It is the same verb that is used in the so-lemn response of a candidate for ordination when his name is called during the ordination ceremony – Adsum, I am present. Adeste fideles – be present, all you faithful. Be present with all your heart and mind and soul. Be present, for at the heart of your existence is a great mystery that is now being revealed to you. Be present in all your weakness and inadequacy and even in your sin. Follow the shepherds, who went with haste (Luke 2:16) to be present in Bethlehem. Be present and be a witness to the glory of God. _
Updated on October 06 2016